Tuesday, January 4, 2011

My Two Cents on the Eden Prairie Redistricting Controversy

I don't have much time to write today, so I'm sorry about not giving a back story to those of my readers who know nothing about this. But I felt the need to comment.

I must first say that I'm relieved not to have any children in the Eden Prairie school system. Secondly, I don't understand why this has gotten so out of hand. Isn't it possible that parents simply want their children to go to the schools closest to their homes? I live very close to one of the elementary schools, and if the district were to create a bubble over my home and tell me that I must bus my child across town for school, I'd be upset.

Now that the Kindergarten Center is gone, five-year-olds are being bussed to these elementary schools. I'd be livid if my little one was not in my neighborhood school. Can't it just be that simple? Why would one automatically be a racist for being against this plan?

There's plenty of evidence that bussing doesn't produce the desired academic results, thus making parents' and students' lives more logistically complicated unnecessarily. Usually, children are bussed out of lower economic areas because the schools there are sub-par and the thought is they could get a better education in a better school in a better neighborhood. So by advocating this plan, is the school board saying some of Eden Prairie's elementary schools are sub-par and others are better? I thought they were striving for excellence across the board. I had no idea they were depriving Eden Prairie's poor by sending them to "bad" neighborhood schools.

This makes no sense, and the escalating language seems as unnecessary as the redistricting plan itself.